John Mitchel was an Irish activist, author and journalist best known for his support for Irish nationalism. During the Great Famine of the 1840s, he was a leading writer for The Nation newspaper produced by the Young Ireland group, which splintered from Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association, the Irish Confederation. As editor of his own paper, the United Irishman, in 1848 Mitchel was sentenced to 14-years penal transportation, the penalty for his advocacy of James Fintan Lalor's programme of co-ordinated resistance to exactions of landlords and to the continued shipment of grain harvests from Ireland to Britain.
